


New Concept

by EvilSheWhispered



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley has Trauma from the Fall (Good Omens), Existential Angst, Existential exploration, First Meetings, Hurt Crowley (Good Omens), I Don't Even Know, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, Other, Podfic Welcome, Pre-Slash, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), Work Up For Adoption, can i blame psychosis from pain?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-26 20:42:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 4,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20748452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EvilSheWhispered/pseuds/EvilSheWhispered
Summary: Here’s the thing, Angels are made. They don’t go through a process of self discovery in the same way humans do. You are made and you already know your place and purpose and abilities and faults all in an instance and you accept it all just as fast.Learning is a new concept for Crowley. He's learning a lot of things. From how to live without god, to how to experience kindness (even when it backfires).





	1. Wrong

**Author's Note:**

> Look, ya'll can see from my other works that sometimes i can't help but write down ideas...but i'm not good at finishing them. I primarily blame pain keeping me from writing more until the fic is a vague memory and plot bunnies have returned to being dust bunnies under my bed. That being said, this fic is up for adoption.

Here’s the thing, Angels are made. They don’t go through a process of self discovery in the same way humans do. You are made and you already know your place and purpose and abilities and faults all in an instance and you accept it all just as fast. You go about your heavenly duty and don’t question whether you could improve. Why would you? In heaven you are made for a specific purpose and one may succeed in fulfilling that purpose or one may fail. You cannot _ exceed _ that purpose or anyone's expectations, you can only disappoint them and fail. You may be demoted within the ranks of Heaven (or to fall) but no one ever gets promoted. 

Crawly...doesn’t remember his position, really. It’s all fuzzy and blurred and its very very hard to talk about. He would’ve talked to Aziraphale about some things, maybe but any time in waking hours that he actually tries to concentrate on heavenly memories it's like trying to see a clear image through a mile of murky ice. He knows he made the stars, those are his clearest memory, he held on to it somehow and now it was the memories he kept going back to during his fall. His escape from the unbearable pain that he had to bear anyway. He was out there, alone save for God’s effervescent presence and Lucifer. He and the fallen archangel didn’t often cross paths in the cosmos.

Lucifer liked making planets more than stars, and would make entire systems with little effort and then spend as much time as he pleased on detailing the planets themselves. No life, of course. But occasionally he would pull him out of nebulae and star nurseries that were Crawly's preference to help with projects. One of Lucifer’s favorites that Crawly still remembers was Cancri E, a Diamond planet. Crawly did like that one too. During the making Crawly had made a star to light the delicate work and it was as if the planet was infinitely filled with nebulas. Color in lightwaves sparkling in all directions. 

Lucifer wasn’t interested in the color or the light, he was interested in the strength. As if one day the planets would be flicked against each other like a celestial game of marbles and he’d just made a sure fire winner, bound to crack each opponent. Crawly didn’t think that was God's plan, but had faith that what would be, would be as it should - acceptable just like himself in each facet.

That faith was perhaps the flaw he didn’t know. He remembered believing that he was exactly as he should be. There was no shame or doubt as an angel, you were made as god intended after all - to feel shame in that, in even your weaknesses, was to feel shame in God. So he’d felt safe. 

When God had withdrawn to prepare to make humanity it was a strange void. God had always been omnipresent, and in a way they still were, but in such a lesser degree where the presence used to be was empty in an ineffable way. Lucifer didn’t seem to feel the same way as if part of him was missing and he was just now discovering the hole. Lucifer felt betrayed instead. His Father had left him to make new toys, that everyone was abuzz that they were, in God’s plan and God’s eyes, better than Angels. Something new intrinsic in their making; Free will. Crawly had listened to Lucifer speak, the light bringer pacing and his anger making and destroying systems and Crawly had curled his knees up and arms around them, trying to hide what must be a visible _ lack _ in his chest. For the first time it was something he did not want to share, did not want others to know for no other seemed to feel it and it felt...wrong. 

A new concept; Wrong.


	2. Death

As Lucifer subsided and went to newly assigned duties helping other archangels prepare for the planet with life, Crawly was left to make stars alone and for the first time the universe seemed a very big place to be working alone in for eternity. He’d asked a question. It’d been without his knowing at the same time in which Lucifer did, in which Lucifer demanded answers or vowed to forsake God’s request to love the yet-to-be-created humans. Crawly asked God why they had left them. Why he felt like he was stumbling blind. He’d asked God why he didn’t feel whole anymore and he had asked the questions in the belief that she would accept him, as she always had. After all, how can he be anything other than what she made him, how could he disappoint an omniscient creator that must surely understand and have made things be as they were?

They had been disappointed in him and they hadn’t accepted him. Somehow, in a universe made perfectly as it was meant to be - he was wrong. Each angel that fell did so separately, and for their own reasons. There was no solace in not being the only creature wrong, and no company in the agony of the fall. When Crawly had hit the boiling sulfur of the still new planet (not yet capable of sustaining life, still being molded and made by angels flitting about) Lucifer was already there. Whole but for his halo. He was somehow still the archangel Lucifer, but he was different - something else too. God had not taken away from their first born, but had added new restrictions, roles. 

Many of the fallen angels crowded to him, crawled to him as the only one standing still. Crawly was the same, he couldn’t crawl, didn’t have the strength, so he pulled himself forward on his belly until he had reached him. He’d looked up at Lucifer and instead of being recognized all he saw in his brother was disgust. To him, they were unrecognizable and they were no longer worthy of anything, they were not angels and they were not created as God intended. His gaze changed each of them into creatures as he saw them. The first demons with features taken from the plans of life that Lucifer so hated. To Lucifer, animals (humans included) and demons were all mistakes. It was, perhaps, the real punishment for him that God created a haven for him, but then locked all the twisted fallen angels inside with him. He’d made them reminders of his hatred and now he had to spend eternity looking at them. 

It was a small eternity until the Humans and the Garden were brought to being. The entire time was pain that could not be described. Crawly had not known, at the time, that pain wasn’t inherent to his new existence. Ever so slowly it had lessened as Lucifer pushed at the edges of his cage, made it bigger my increments that by the same amount allowed for distance away from him and his hatred. To be acknowledged within the archangels mind was to know nothing but the wish never to have existed. To please cease to now.

A new concept; Death. 


	3. Learning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short i know, but this is the style i went with?

Lucifer kept him close for a long time. Lucifer knew who they had been but Crawly hadn’t yet found a demon who remembered what heaven looked like, felt like, or anything they’d done there. It had only faded more as time went on and Crawly never ever let on that he remembered the stars. When Adam and Lilith were created Lucifer had relinquished him as his favorite only because he found he could not leave. Crawly crawled and clawed his way through the ethereal boundary between them and earth. When he was finally fully in the garden, with a corporation given to him in order to be seen and influence the humans it was to a realization that he knew nothing about himself.

A new concept; Learning. 


	4. Vanity

He was not an angel, and his first form was Lucifer’s interpretation, instead of anything reminiscent of his previous one. It took him a long time to learn how to move, and he finally did so by watching similar (though smaller) creatures succeed where he failed. He watched, and then learned, improved. Nothing had ever had to do that in existence before. Things were often too bright. He hadn’t made the star that was in the blue sky, but he wondered if it was on purpose that he could no longer enjoy its full light. The heat it provided felt nice, but the light hurt his eyes and made things harder to see. He found he had to rely on his other senses more. In this form they were more limited than they’d been. He couldn't access his ethereal awareness.

When he first saw his reflection of a still pond it was because he’d watched Lilith look upon hers and work her fingers through her hair. She felt as he had; that everything was as it was meant to be - she was as God had made her. But she felt something new in that knowledge, she felt proud that she was as god made her. She played and twisted with her hair to try and improve it to her liking, she bathed and scrubbed to make her skin soft and clean and she plucked flowers god had made that she thought were pretty to adorn herself with.

A New concept; Vanity.


	5. Shame

Crawly had slithered to the waters edge when she’d left, had gazed down and saw the snake he now was. As an angel he’d never seen himself. He’d just known what he was and how he was. There was no comparison between him and others, no wondering how to perceive himself or how others would perceive him. He wasn’t the same, he was lacking and it felt wrong to him. Looking at himself caused pain and so he turned away.

A new concept; Shame.


	6. Anger

He watched for years. He took note of the angels on the wall, distanced but present. Cherubims - all except one. He watched as Lilith was cast out of the garden. Adam had said she did not need to take the pretty flowers because she was perfect as she was, nothing needed to be added to her and to take what was unneeded was wrong. Lilith had grown angry at him for telling her that she could only be as she was - never more. She’d not meant to be anything but what she enjoyed being, which was happy and having the flowers circletted around her wrist and braided in her hair made her happy. Her anger, though, made the flowers wilt and made her pretty face twist, he fingers clenching where they’d always been gentle. Her form twisted, though not in the drastic way in which the demons were made it twisted inside. Adam could not see the change but God and Crawly could. So God banished her from the safety of the Garden. Her banishment was from her happiness for a long time to come and in its absence she twisted herself further.

A new concept; Anger.


	7. Good

Crawly watched from the bows of the apple tree as God took Adam’s rib and made Eve out of it. The two of them were never separated from each other if they could help it. They were part of each other in more than the physical separation could explain. It made the absence in Crawly feel more insistent than ever. He wondered if that was how Adam or Eve felt when they were away from each other. It seemed like they did and, because he had been sent here to make trouble after all and he knew a sure way of doing so was to ask questions, he slithered up to Eve while she was alone while adam was off naming things and he asked her.

She said yes, in a way. Without Adam there was a lack, but it did not feel like a physical part of her was missing, she was whole and separate from him. But in her chest there was a place where he was, even when he wasn’t there and when she was away from him it called for him. She said if they ever had to leave each other for more time she thinks it would hurt like when she sometimes fell down on a rock but instead of on the surface it would hurt deep in her chest. 

He asked why God would make her like that and she said that she liked the feeling, because it made her happy when Adam was there and it let her know when he was gone. She said it was a good thing.

A new concept: Good.


	8. Fear

Crawly asked if she believed God had made her exactly as she was meant to be. She’d said yes. He asked if She knew what learning was and when she shook her head he’d asked if she knew how to move when she was first made. When that too made her shake her head he told her that she had learned how to move, learned how to walk. God had made her able to walk, but had not taught her how. Was she meant to, or had she done something God had not intended?

Eve had thought curiously before explaining patiently to the crimson and black serpent that learning must be something God intended. After all, the newest birds and the very newest furry scuttling creatures that Adam had not yet named did not know how to move when they first came to being either. The first generation had, but the newest ones had to learn.

Crawly had spent days away afterward. He’d gone around the edge of the Garden, around the wall just out of sight of the vigilant Cherubims. She believed as he had, but she did not feel that there was a question to be answered, so why ask it? Perhaps that was his mistake, perhaps his faith had been less. He’d felt that curiosity was simply a part of God’s creation of him so They would want him to ask. Instead, it seemed that They had wanted him to simply accept things. He was not limitless though, he did not know everything, he had not known that and he did not know what he was meant to learn. How does one learn without someone to ask? Eve had learned what existence was through Adam. 

Crawly had left it at that for the day. Evening coming meant Adam would be back and Adam did not like him. He didn’t dislike him either, but so far the two humans, the angel on the wall and the snake were the only creatures with language and Adam kept asking him why not all creatures spoke, and why none others of his nature were his size or spoke to them. Crawly had noticed a few of the birds were getting very close to humanoid vocalization, if not exactly enough to carry on conversations so perhaps the man would be more accepting of his company when he’d gotten around to discovering and naming those birds. That way Crawly did not have to explain what had happened to change his form, or justify any of it. He was...unsure, something akin to the shame he felt when he looked at himself and something new but not directed at anything. 

He understood, perhaps, what it was that evening. He slithered up the wall, nearly every evening to a middle point between guards. He could only stay here a few hours because the Cherubims paced the length of their section of the wall. The fourth angel was not a Cherubim, but a Principality and Crawly did not understand why. The principality was filling a role that he was not made for, as God had assigned him it could not be a mistake but it was not how Heaven worked. The Principality did his job differently than the Cherubims, his nature told him to be friendly with the creatures and to love and nurture as much as to protect. So in the evenings the Principality often left his post to go to the two humans. They would talk together, Adam would tell him what new animals he had named that day and the three of them would be softly visible beneath the canopy of greenery by the orange flickering light from the Seraphs flaming sword.

Crawly would stay on the wall and look up to the sky and try and remember the names of each star, each group and system and planet and nebula. They were still lovely, though his perspective was different. He would spend hours on the cooling stone trying to bring them into better focus, trying to will his form into remembering how to see them. Usually when his corporeal body started to feel sluggish and tired from the cool air and stone, the way the other creatures did at night and he never had, he would look down and see the flickering flame heading back to the wall through the jungle and would slither back down.

He did not know if the ethereal beings knew he was here, but so far they had been willing to leave him alone if they were. He did not wish to test it and be sent back to hell. The burning pain was less, here, and that feeling of shame mixed with dread, mixed with an unwillingness, a refusal and self preservation to go back and lose all he was to overwhelming pain again would fill him at the very thought.

A new concept; Fear.


	9. Kindness

This evening, the night was darker than it had been. The moon was partially shaded where it had been steadily round. God was still adjusting the details of time - hadn’t got it quite right. So far there had been about three days...the days lasted an unspecified amount of time, in which two generations of each type of animal had lived, reproduced, and died and each creature had learned if it was hunter or prey or scavenger and how to go about such things. The humans needed to rest more often than there was night time. They seemed to feel like the light was bothersome and so had taken to sleeping under the large Apple Tree that would seem to sense their weariness and have slightly deeper shadows than the surrounding verdant foliage.

Crawly had found that he could rest well on sun warmed rocks but it seemed different than other creatures. He stayed fully conscious, just relaxed. Perhaps it was something to do with this form lacking the ability to close its eyes. Dreadful things, these eyes. They didn’t see well enough, and they looked awful. He couldn’t remember what colour his had been, had never seen them but had known anyway, but they weren’t the colour of burnt rust with a deep gash of a pupil staring at you.

He stared at the dark sky and pinpricks of light until they blurred further and stared after as his body wrapped around itself coiling and coiling, brushing scales the wrong way and the tiny pinches of pain made him want to nash his teeth, bite at the cage this form was. He couldn't /do/ anything. He couldn't feel anything. Couldn’t actually sense the angels, or any living thing and he couldn’t feel /himself/. He couldn’t unfurl his wings and he couldn’t create anything and he couldn't influence anything. He couldn’t even taste or see or hear or smell properly. Things were mixed together and so very very limited and it still ached, it still burned, where his wings should be even though the wound was an eternity ago. He twisted around and sank his fangs into the place where some of that burn was strongest. 

The sharpness of the new wound made the ethereal one a little less present. It grounded him in the body, and the time. Time wasn’t exactly a new concept, it’d been thought of and implemented before the first war and his subsequent fall. It was just so much more fluid before. Heaven had sort of existed in a constant state of ‘all time’ and Hell did just the same. They occupied the same in between space after all. Might as well have been different floors of the same office building. And that was the thing wasn’t it, he knew things that didn't exist but they were slippery concepts - outside of hell or heaven, you couldn’t really look right at those thoughts or they’d slip. Time was getting steadily more rigid in nature, and Crawly, seemingly cut off from anything beyond himself, was also getting progressively more mired in it. It was a relief to have something distancing him from hell beyond the thin occult veil, but he was terrified that it meant he was getting ever further from heaven and himself too.

It was strange, holding on to any scrap of himself. After all, he was still here. But he didn’t remember how many wings he had, he didn’t really remember what his form had been any longer. He didn’t remember his rank, which would have helped because oddly enough he still knew them all, and their usual traits. Just like he knew that the guardian of the southern gate had four faces and a fifth wing to the usual four. Wings were generally manifestations of power and within a rank you did have susciations of how many would appear, but only ever by one. It wasn’t that odd to see an angel with uneven wings. 

The principality in whose post he was currently curled had the flaming sword, instead of being surrounded intrinsically by celestial fire. He also had four wings, another extra to the usual three of the rank. Principalities were nearest to the form of humans out of all the ranks. They were made to be on earth - to help guide the developing humans. They were to be able to interfere where most often the other angels were barred from doing so, to keep intact free will. They were younger than Crawly was - he remembered when they were made. It was before time so it was inconsequential to what order they were made, really. He remembered Micheal and Gabriel felt it mattered quite a bit and he remembered he’d been made after them.

He realized that there was light approaching, and as the sun was not responsible it had to be the flame of the sword. He tried to pull his fangs out of scales and...he couldn’t. He was stuck, in a ball, with his only defense unavailable and the guardian of the eastern gate approaching. He really wished he could close his eyes right now.

He tried. He really did, but there was also panic setting in, and the corporation seemed to have a mind of its own. He might still be a demon, a creature beyond this form, but the form itself was want to behave as befitted its shape. That apparently included damaging itself when stressed and his jaw clenching in place and refusing to unhinge so that he could disentangle himself.

He wondered if Lucifer would actually destroy him if he became discorporated without causing significant trouble. Maybe he could claim Liliths vanity as his doing? The angel appeared, having manifested its wings and risen gracefully to the top of the wall within a moment and then glided down the length to find Crawly. He couldn’t really see the angel, because of the position he was in and it was approaching from behind him, but instead of the bite of the sword he felt a gentle hand. 

Two hands, from a human-shaped body carefully picked him up and studied his predicament. He was too large for humans to have lifted, but of course, the angel had no trouble.   
“Well, you’ve got yourself in quite the shape, haven’t you?” The angel said, not unkindly. “Let me help you, here.”  
And the angel carefully dislodged his fangs and pulled his tail slowly free. The wound bled freely but the demon knew it’d heal in a moment. The Angel, though, apparently disagreed with leaving it because his hands tightened slightly when Crawly tried to maneuver out of his arms.   
“Just a moment, i’ll just -”

Holy light was emanating from one of the hands and he was holding it over the wounds to heal it. It burned. It burned like his wings and he screeched and writhed until the Angel had let go of him with surprise. The wound on his body had, in fact, healed.   
“Oh I'm so sorry, I thought since you and I were both originally...well, forgive me, won't you?”  
The Angel was apologizing to him, to a demon. He fled instead of answering because he really couldn’t think of what to say. 

Angels were meant to be soldiers, and they were meant to fill their roles. Helping a demon, who also had a role to fill, did not fall into that purview. Angels didn’t help one another, demons certainly didn’t, but Angels also didn’t have a sense of subtlety in their punishment and wrath, so the attempt had been genuine on the Principalities part.

A new concept: Kindness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end, for now at least.


End file.
